Many of you have probably walked by the explosion scene by now, but in case you haven’t, here it is:
No wonder it was so loud! The sidewalk was completely shattered from below!
Thanks to all the readers who responded, especially in the immediate aftermath. Many of you have expressed your frustration at not being able to find any news about this, so I’m glad I was able to at least create a space to share information.
Reader David also noted that here may have been two additional explosions on Classon at Myrtle-Willoughby yesterday (via Gothamist Labs).
Is this a common occurence? The blast was loud and frightening on Friday night. The authorities seemed to know in advance that it would happen — firetrucks were lining Washington immediately afterwards. But still. Someone walking past could have been seriously injured. It doesn’t seem fair that there was no communication with the neighborhood from ConEd, etc, aside from the residents whose homes had to be searched before and after the blast.
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11 Comments
There were 3 explosions on Classon between Myrtle & Willoughby, Starting around 5:45PM
Manhole Cover blew
Flames Shot out of the Sewer at Classon & Myrtle for about 20 minutes and then
thick black smoke for about an hour
Firemen, Police all repsonded quickly
Con Edison was on the scnee within an Hour
I belive con edison fixed the tranformers because I lights went back on around 10:30PM
Manhole explosions are more common when it snows because the salt used to treat the roads corrodes the underground wires:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B04E0DD1131F933A15750C0A9629C8B63
Why do you say the authorities knew it was going to happen? Did you mean to write “could” instead of “would”? Do you really mean that Con Ed said, “Hey that manhole cover’s going to blow. We won’t rope it off or say anything; just wait for it. Wait for it.”
CB… I’m sure lesterhead isn’t concocting a conspiracy theory. You should check out the New York Times article (from 2004!) that Fred posted above: it isn’t particularly comforting with regard to how Con Ed or anybody else is handling NYC and Brooklyn’s aging infrastructure.
If CB would read the first on yesterdays entry on this subject he would see that a comnmentator said that he and his wife walked by five minutes before the explosion and the fire department was on scene before the blast.
i live on this block and lost my power for all of saturday, since the explosion burned our power lines under the sidewalk, and they had to replace them. the coned guy i spoke to (on the street) said this has happened before and it killed a coned employee. scary!
Well Jim … that’s me being personable by referring to you in the first person instead of the third, hope you don’t mind … upon re-reading the comments of yesterday’s post, I see that someone did report that the firefighters were on the scene before the explosion. So, sorry about that. And Andrew, like most New Yorkers, I’m aware of the piss-poor condition of the city’s infrastructure. I’m still not clear what is the complaint about the firefighters’ and Con Ed’s actions in this instance. I assume if they were there and knew there was a problem, they were keeping pedestrians away from the area, and I assume they were too busy trying to address the problem to go door-to-door through the whole neighborhood to personally inform everyone what was going on. I’m not sure what the mechanism for instant community-wide communication of a situation would be . . . a continually updated website? Public radio notices?
> I’m not sure what the mechanism for instant community-wide
> communication of a situation would be . . . a continually
> updated website? Public radio notices?
Text messages!!
How about the cops using a Bull Horn to announce a warning. ( I’m joking unless it was something Deadly.) I live on the block where this happened & my lights were flickering about 45 mins. before it blew. But I still had power after it happened. I don’t believe they had a chance to salt at that time so I wondered why it happened.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/franciscodaum/3122943596/
This is one more reason to have a carbon monoxide detector. Manhole explosions can generate carbon monoxide that travel back to residential & commercial spaces. Conduits from manholes can burn up & affect buildings as in the case w/ the fire in the link above.
I live on Washington Ave, someone in my building called 911 because of the smell & smoke coming up from the basement. The FDNY was in the process of evacuating our building when the explosion occurred. I think they had an idea of what was going on, but I don’t think they knew the explosion was going to take place.
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